Underprovision of mental health services for children and young people

摘要

The recent publication of the NHS digital 2017 survey of children and young people’s mental health highlights how critical the issue of provision of mental health services for this group is.1 Previous policy including Future in Mind, identified core principles needed to improve services and support children and young people’s emotional wellbeing and resilience through early intervention and prevention, improving access, care for the most vulnerable, better accountability and transparency, and workforce development.2 There was ￡1.4 billion allocated over 5 years to implement these (as reported by the HM Treasury Budget 2015). This was endorsed a year later by the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health,3 which added that improvements were needed in crisis care, 7-day care, and in the development of new integrated services.To achieve these ambitions local transformation plans (LTPs) were created.2 Developed by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), they focus on investing resources for children and young people’s mental health across the ‘whole’ system. The financial investment has been used to train new and existing staff to deliver psychological therapies to children and young people, develop perinatal mental health services, and services for eating disorders. Other outcomes include changing legislation around keeping young people aged 18 years in a police cell and the introduction of waiting …